Two thoughts…

on the current government shutdown in Minnesota and the pending Federal shutdown.

Good for us because maybe we’ll have to learn to do things by ourselves or reach out and cooperate with neighbors, friends, and family to take care of each other. After all, the government isn’t our “community” . A little empowerment and a lot less nanny state may be just the ticket to get us up and back on our feet. The truth is that the government needs the citizens much more than the citizens need the government.

Good for us, as well, because all these arguments and debates mean that freedom in some form is still alive and well. We may not like how things are working but at least we can gripe, moan, manuever, politicize, and argue all we want. Representative democracy, despite the fact that it often looks like making sausage, is actually a good thing. There are more than a few places in the world where people have simply given up on the give and take of it all and opted to have a single person or party make all the decisions (Iran, Chicago, etc…). Temporary fix perhaps but a long term desecration for sure. I’d much rather have the messy stuff that comes with freedom over the efficiencies of a dictator.